This is the second, and probably not the last time, I write about coaches this season.

I’m fascinated by who is successful and who is not. I want to know what the winners possess that propels them to success and what the losers don’t that assigns them to futility.

One factor that I’m positive looms over the success of any coach is evaluating talent.

Mike McCormack was the head coach of the Eagles when my friend Ray Didinger and I tried to convince him to draft Billy “White Shoes” Johnson out of Widener College.

His response to us was, “We’d love to have him, but we’ve only got 16 rounds, and we have to make each one count.”

Huh?

As great as the Pittsburgh Steelers have been since the 70s, their success could have started earlier and been sustained even after the days of Terry Bradshaw.

Everybody knows the story of the Pittsburgh kid, Johnny Unitas, who was draft out of Louisville grudgingly by the Steelers’ Walt Kiesling in the ninth round in 1957.

According to Steelers owner Dan Rooney, in his autobiography, Kiesling hated Unitas.

Unitas played semi-pro football before the Baltimore Colts gave him a chance to become an immortal.

Rooney said Kiesling knew football inside and out. It was obvious he knew squat about talent.

Years later, the Steelers were in position to draft another hometown hero, Dan Marino out of University of Pittsburgh.

In 1983, Chuck Noll fell in love with Texas Tech defensive tackle Gabe Rivera, and passed on Marino, who was selected by Miami with the next to last pick in the first round behind five other quarterbacks.

Marino, of course, went on to one of the more prolific careers in football history.

Another man who had a problem evaluating talent was Philadelphia’s Joe Kuharich.

Sonny Jurgensen was his quarterback when he took over the Eagles. One of his first moves was to deal Jurgensen, a Wilmington native, to Washington in exchange for former Wake Forest great, Norman Snead.

I would be remiss if I did not mention there should be no accolades for the Patriots Bill Belichick for having made Tom Brady a sixth round draft choice in 2000.

That was pure luck.

Once you get past Round 3 or perhaps Round 4, selecting players really becomes a crap shoot.

I’m not saying Belichick isn’t a genius, he just also possesses an ample amount of good fortune.

Grillo